Experimental Archaeology
Inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki, Pavel Pavel set out to demonstrate how the monolithic Moai of Easter Island might have been moved into place by a small number of people using only rudimentary technologies. He conducted a practice experiment in 1982 in south Bohemia using a concrete model (4.5 m, 12 tonnes). In 1986 he was invited by Heyerdahl to Easter Island to test his experiment in its actual setting, where he successfully replicated the experiment. Only 16 people with one leader were needed for relatively fast statue transportation.
He then performed some further experiments. He and five assistants using only wooden sledges erected and moved a 30-ton rocking stone at the village of Kadov (in Strakonice District) to its original location, from where it had been removed in the 19th century by unknown vandals. He estimated that only 160 people with similar simple technology would have been necessary for transportation of the 800 ton stones in Baalbek.
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“Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)